John Lennon's best song

[spoonless]

Growing up, I always thought "Imagine" was his best... recently I wrote down a page or so of thoughts of mine that I had about the song Imagine when I was first introduced to it, around 9th grade, in my biography. But someone just forwarded me a link to another song of his, a song called "God". How have I never heard this?? They play Imagine on the radio all the time, but this never gets any airplay. I've always thought the intelligence of crowdsourcing generally does a decent job of picking out good songs to play on the radio from each artist (although not nearly as good a job for picking the artists or genres themselves), but this really makes me think that certain songs are intentionally suppressed due to containing ideas that are too difficult or controversial for people to process. I can't imagine why they would have thought Imagine or other songs were worthy of airplay but not this.

And yet somehow, songs like Justin Timberlake's Carry-Out "I have you open all night like you I.H.O.P" get tons of radio play, despite what should be considered controversial sexist lyrics.

Interestingly, Ferris Beuller's Day Off was my favorite movie when I was in middle school, and I had watched it so many times I could recite every line of the movie by heart, including this part where he's in the shower which was one of my favorites...


I do have a test today, that wasn't bullshit. It's on European socialism. I mean, really, what's the point? I'm not European. I don't plan on being European. So who gives a crap if they're socialists? They could be fascist anarchists, it still doesn't change the fact that I don't own a car."
[sings Danke Schoen into showerhead for a bit]
Not that I condone fascism, or any -ism for that matter. -Ism's in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an -ism, he should believe in himself. I quote John Lennon, "I don't believe in Beatles, I just believe in me." Good point there. After all, he was the walrus. I could be the walrus. I'd still have to bum rides off people.
- Ferris Beuller

but I never knew the line "I don't believe in Beatles, I just believe in me" was a reference to this song!

Comments

[roxymartini.livejournal.com]

He doesn't believe in HITLER?

I'm pretty sure hilter was real.

This would piss off too many jews who'd spin it as holocaust denialism or something.

also, i don't think the lyric about him and Yoko is very relatable. didn't most people hate Yoko? i'd conjecture that that's why it doesn't get any air time.

[spoonless.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... I didn't realize that the public disliked Yoko, but I don't know much about her. I just read over her Wikipedia page and don't see any mention of that. What did they dislike about her?

Regarding Hilter, my first reaction was the say that you're just interpreting what he's saying too literally. Obviously, he is not saying he doesn't believe a man named Adolf Hilter exist. However, I think you have a good point, that what he is saying, some Jews or others may be offended by.

I think what he is saying is, at least in part, that the legend of Hilter... like that of Elvis, Bob Dylan, Jesus, etc. grew to be much greater than the man himself and has a whole mythology surrounding it that is probably not all that representive of the real man. I think being as famous as John Lennon, he must have been keenly aware about how the press constructs images of people, and surely they did the same thing with Hilter, and we have a particular narrative about this evil mastermind. But in reality there are probably a lot of people who would have ended up doing what Hilter did if they were in his situation.

The other interpretation is that he's just saying he doesn't believe in Hilter's ideology, just like he doesn't believe in the ideologies of the other idols he mentions. But I suspect that's only part of it and you're right that there's an aspect of it that may be offensive to some.

[roxymartini.livejournal.com]

Well, a lot of people credit her with the beatles' breakup: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles%27_break-up

While she probably wasn't the only force (see article) there is no denying that she was a contributing factor.

You're right, I'm probably being too literal. Afterall, Kennedy is on there too.

The U.S. population is... what... 85% god-believing? maybe they did play this at one point but it never got that popular.

just curious - why did you think this was better than imagine?

[spoonless.livejournal.com]

just curious - why did you think this was better than imagine?

Dunno, they're both good... maybe the novelty will wear off and I'll change my mind, who knows!